Reducing poverty is not just about income, it's giving people a voice

The number one objective of the global Sustainable Development Goals is to alleviate absolute poverty by 2030. The commitments in these goals hold governments to account, helping people to feel more empowered.

A homeless street child wears a shirt as another sleeps on a pavement in Kolkata, India. Credit: Bikas Das/AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved. In
May 1997, a new Labour Government was elected in the UK. One of its first ‘machinery of government’
changes was to create a new Department for International Development (DFID),
headed by then Secretary of State for International Development – Clare Short –
who would be in the Cabinet. It was also
decided to write a White Paper on International Development, which was
published in November of that year: ‘Eliminating World Poverty: A Challenge for
the 21st Century’.

The
focus of paper, in which I was closely involved, was a new paradigm for
international development, determined no longer by the politics of the Cold War
but by a desire to see development benefit the poorest people in the poorest
countries. This new framework for
development – the International Development Targets (which were a few years
later to be transformed into the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs) – had
as their overarching goal the halving of absolute poverty by 2015, with a
number of supporting targets focusing on primary education and primary health.

It
quickly became evident that bringing about improved health and education
outcomes could not be achieved simply by making better health and education
interventions. We said this very clearly
in the White Paper, not least in relation to governance and accountability. “Sound
and accountable government…is the foundation of economic growth and poverty
elimination, allowing poor and disadvantaged people to achieve their civil,
political, economic, social and cultural rights”. It quickly became evident that bringing about improved health and education outcomes could not be achieved simply by making better health and education interventions.Of
course better governance and development are not synonymous, any more than
economic growth and development are synonymous. But we can perhaps at least say
that the prospects for development are significantly increased if there are certain
conditions in place. This is a theme which we developed in a further initiative
in which I was involved, which was the Commission for Africa established in
2004 by then Prime Minister Tony Blair to produce recommendations to be
considered by G8 leaders at the Gleneagles Summit in the summer of 2005. The Commission’s Report ‘Our Common Interest’
was issued in March that year.

The
argument ran something like this. In order to deliver development, and in
particular the Millennium Development Goals, it was necessary to have minimum
standards of peace, security and governance in place. Under those conditions,
it was possible to build the health and education systems required to deliver
on the MDGs. But it was not possible to sustain those systems without economic
growth. Economic growth would not happen without a significant involvement from
the private sector. The private sector would not invest or flourish unless
there were reasonable levels of peace, security and governance. And so on…

Those
arguments remain valid, but the international framework now looks rather
different from 1997 or 2005. Whilst the
ideological differences which had divided the world into east and west had
disappeared or were fast disappearing, the north/south divide (albeit bridged
by a number of ‘emerging economies’) remained solid. Development was perceived essentially as a
compact: policy changes (including those addressing governance and corruption) were
to be delivered by the poor south with financial and technical support from the
rich north.

That
all changed with the global financial crisis (or what the Chinese refer to as
‘the North Atlantic financial crisis’) in 2008/2009. Many countries in the ‘south’ – notably China
and India, but many others in Asia and Africa too – were posting growth in
excess of 7% per annum regularly (and in some cases as high as 10%), whilst after
the crisis the ‘north’ struggled to avoid recession and to post any positive
growth at all. The G8 leaked power as the G20 absorbed it. Questions (as yet largely unanswered) began
being raised about global governance structures which had been put in place at
the end of the Second World War and which continued to reflect the
international power dynamic of 1945 rather than the early 21st
Century.

So
the world in which discussions began in 2012/2013 about a new set of goals to
succeed the Millennium Development Goals was a very different one from the late
1990s. In the overall scheme of things, aid mattered less than it had fifteen
years earlier, albeit remaining very important for a number of countries. And
there was a growing recognition of a number of issues, known as ‘global public
goods’, which could only be addressed by the world acting as a whole. Climate
change is perhaps the most obvious, but others like environmental pollution and
diseases that cross national boundaries loom increasingly large.

A
new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was agreed in New York in
September 2015. The key objective (Goal 1) is to eliminate absolute poverty,
everywhere, in all its forms, by 2030. There are 17 Goals and 169 Targets – a
challenge for the most photographic of memories. But the document within which
they are enshrined Transforming Our World: The Sustainable Development Agenda
for 2030 helpfully summarises the key points into five ‘P’s. These are:

-
Prosperity. Continuing inclusive economic growth is essential;

-
People. Everyone must benefit from the SDGs, and no-one must be left behind;

-
Planet. We must nurture and respect the environment, dealing with issues such
as climate change;

-
Peace. Conflict, insecurity and bad governance are the enemies of development
and progress;

-
Partnerships. Governments, civil society and the private sector all have
important roles to play.

‘Leaving no-one behind’ is not just a function of economics and financial well-being; it is also a function of justice and governance.

What,
then, is the role of governance in delivering this comprehensive agenda? The answer is significant – and not just in
delivering the agenda, but being a part of the agenda itself. Goal 16 is: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies
for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build
effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. Targets
include those related to reducing violence and related deaths; promoting the
rule of law and access to justice; addressing corruption and bribery and
increasing transparency; and ensuring responsive, inclusive and representative
decision-making at all levels.

It
is important to understand that these goals are universal; they apply as much
to the UK as they do to Ethiopia or Bolivia. Every country will need to set out
its own national strategy for how it plans to deliver on the SDGs. Not all of the goals will be equally relevant
in all countries of course – but the SDGs set out a series of commitments on
the basis of which governments can be held accountable. Doing so in practice
has become a much more dynamic process over the past 15 years, with much wider
access to information technology in general and mobile phones in particular. People
feel increasingly empowered as a result – and that matters.

It
matters because we need to remember that poverty is not just about levels of income.
It is also about voice, and people being able to have some control over their
lives through understanding their rights – precisely as set out in the 1997
White Paper, and one of a key set of preconditions for development as set out
in the Commission for Africa Report. Prime
Minister David Cameron, who was part of a High Level Panel reporting in 2013
which helped set the framework for the new set of goals has referred to these
conditions as a ‘golden thread’. The summit which he hosted in May 2016 clearly
recognised that corruption and bad governance had to be addressed by the global
community working as a whole.

‘Leaving
no-one behind’ is not just a function of economics and financial well-being; it
is also a function of justice and governance. Being poor is not just about
having no resources; it is also about having no voice. As we recognised back in 1997: ‘Raising
standards of governance is central to the elimination of poverty’.

This article is published in association with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which is seeking to contribute to public knowledge about effective democracy-strengthening by leading a discussion on openDemocracy about what approaches work best. Views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of WFD. WFD’s programmes bring together parliamentary and political party expertise to help developing countries and countries transitioning to democracy.

About the author

Myles
Wickstead CBE is Visiting Professor (International Relations) at King’s College
London. He has held a number of senior
positions in DFID and the FCO, including as British Ambassador to Ethiopia and
the African Union. He is on a number of
Boards of NGOs and Foundations, and is a previous Vice-Chair of the Westminster
Foundation for Democracy. His book Aid and
D3velopment: A Brief Introduction was published by Oxford University Press in
2015.

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